CHURCH NEEDS `FISHERS OF MEN'

Steve Kloehn, Tribune Religion WriterCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Pope John Paul II made an impassioned plea for young people to consider the priesthood or religious orders Sunday, taking his case directly to an estimated 1 million worshipers who gathered at an enormous, dusty racetrack for a two-hour mass.

The worldwide shortage of Roman Catholic priests has become epidemic in Latin America, where some rural churches go weeks at a time without a mass, waiting for the arrival of a traveling priest.

The 78-year-old pope's voice had quivered early in the mass, the largest event of his ongoing visit to the Americas, but he spoke forcefully as he told young people not to be afraid of a life in the church. His enthusiasm grew as the crowd began to interrupt his homily with applause and cheering.

"Christ is surely calling some of you to follow him and to give yourselves totally to the cause of the Gospel. Don't be afraid to receive the Lord's invitation. . . . Follow him to become, like the Apostles, fishers of men," the pope said.

"I also encourage fathers and mothers to be the first to nourish the seed of the vocation in your children," he continued. "Dear parents, educate your children according to the principles of the Gospel so they can be the evangelizers of the third millennium. The church needs more evangelizers."

Thousands of people had camped out overnight at the site of the mass despite temperatures that dropped below freezing. Organizers had expected 800,000 worshipers but ultimately said that 1 million crowded onto the track. Priests standing outside the fences offered mass simultaneously for thousands more who could not get in to see the pope. Nearby residents brought television sets out to the sidewalk for others who were left out.

In his homily, the pope expressed his feeling for Mexico's indigenous people and obliquely criticized political and religious opponents of the church.

"Sons and daughters of Mexico and the whole of America, do not seek the truth of life in fallacious and apparently novel ideologies," the pontiff urged, in what some observers interpreted as an allusion to fast-growing Pentecostal churches that are eating into the Roman Catholic church's domination in Latin America.

In the evening, the pope visited 30 terminally ill patients at a local hospital.

The pope is scheduled to take part in a music and prayer service for families at a Mexico City soccer stadium Monday evening before departing Tuesday for St. Louis, where President Clinton is to greet the pontiff and meet with him in private.